


The Schattenfreunde

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Case Fic, Gen, Shapeshifting, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 14:39:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1782607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is now complete, barring minor edits.</p><p>If Google Translate has not done me a deep disservice, the title should mean, "The Shadow Friends." The punning relationship to "schadenfreude" is intentional...on the part of the author, and on the part of the not-quite-human subculture that adopted the name for themselves. Cross them and they will take great joy in your harm. </p><p>Case-fic with squint-and-look-sidewise hints of Mystrade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Death Dancer

The corpses had been found over a period of days, left out in the elements in the parks of London, lying on the green turf for all the world like abandoned prey. All of them were change-children—shapeshifters, killed in half-morph. The corpses were sad and ugly, as graceless as half-fledged chicks or tadpoles only half-way turned to froglets, with all the pitiful grossness of the dead. They were mangled, tooth marks marring their broken necks and spines, bellies ripped open and offal tossed wide. They had died in fear and pain.

In Regent’s Park it had been a foxling, little black hands covered in a nap of soot fur, pointed face anime-cute in the transition between human and vulpine forms. A wolf-wender had been found in the Old Deer Park, not yet fur-clad, but otherwise almost fully changed, looking too small and forlorn tossed on the greensward, chocolate-brown skin suggesting a dark-haired human form—maybe even a dark skinned human form. The tail, bare as a rat’s, had been gnawed off at the base and had ended up at the far side of the green. There had been a brock in Kensington Gardens, badger-grey and stocky, fingers intact but tipped with the first arching lengths of claw—too tender and slight, still, for her to defend herself from whatever had chewed her head half-off before rabbit-kicking her intestines out onto the ground bark of the flower bed she’d been found in. And now, the latest, on Hampstead Heath …

She was the least transformed of the victims found to date. It was easy to see her original form—a slight woman, blonde, of middle years, with blue eyes that stared up into the sun. She’d been just beginning a shift to bird form, her body shrinking in the uncanny way shifters managed, her pinion feathers just breaking through, the form of arm and wrist and hand moving subtly toward the shape of a flight wing.

“Osprey,” Sherlock said, squatting over the body. His nostrils flared, and he stared down at her, frowning. “Another half-minute and she’d have escaped.”

“What took her down,” Donovan asked, teeth clenched.

“Felinoid. Classic nape-attack.” Sherlock slipped a biro out of his pocket and pointed gingerly at the entrance wounds at the base of the woman’s skull. “Here and here: you can see where the upper and lower canines penetrated. A bit of pressure and a quick shake and the teeth would force apart the vertebrae of the neck. It played with its prey, then—tumbled the body, hugged it, rabbit-kicked the abdomen open. Nothing appears to have been eaten, this time—it was interrupted before it could feed.”

“What kind of felinoid?” Her eyes were narrow and distrustful, studying Sherlock as he studied the body.

He shrugged. “Too little evidence at present. Perhaps I can tell you more after the forensic tests come back. But for now all I can say is a large felinoid: could be a were, could be a shifter. Could be one of the Chimerals. It’s about the size of a Siberian tiger, though—large scale. One of the biggest I’ve seen, at a guess. Body weight in feline form approximately…” He studied the crime site, as well as the body, then said, “Judging by length of stride, width of the paw at full extension, scale of the claws, depth of the footprints, I would say about eleven feet long, about eight hundred pounds, roughly fifty inches at the shoulder. Arm extension including chest expansion appears to be seventy-five inches. No suggestion of a flight-capable form at this time. No indication of shaper abilities, as the creature is intelligent enough to hide its tracks on pavement and in water—no way to easily determine if it shifts to a less remarkable form after leaving the crime site. That said, it seems most logical to assume it’s a form-changer of some _sort. Otherwise we may be forced to postulate an invisible felinoid of substantial size.”_

  
“Great. ‘A big cat.’ We could have told you that much before you ever showed, Freak.” She glowered at him, bitterly.

“Yes,” he snapped back. “’A Big Cat,’ as you so eloquently put it. It is not my fault that once you’ve counted in weres, skinwalkers, shapers, kami and spirit animals, Chimerals, and all the rest, we are left with a wide array of possible felinoids and no current data to eliminate the impossible.” He snorted. “Or would it comfort you to be told it’s almost certainly not any of the gryphonines or manticoreans? Those I can eliminate.”

She nailed him with doubting, angry eyes. “And you? I hear you shift to one of the big cats. What about you?”

“Donovan!” Lestrade cut in, then, furious. “That’s enough.”

“Why is it enough, _sir_.” The resentment in her voice was pure poison. “Because he’s your pet shifter, so we can’t ask?”

“Because we know what he shifts to,” Lestrade snarled.

She turned and met his glare, suspicious. “We do?” Her inflection turned the question into a statement— _The hell we do! “_ Shifters don’t all just have one form. _Sir._ ”

“No. But most have a clear size range they can’t easily undershoot or overshoot.  I’ve seen Sherlock’s shift, Donovan. He’s half the scale needed to do this.”

“And does he know any other shifters the size to do it?” She rounded on Sherlock again, ignoring John bristling in the background.

Sherlock met her, his eyes slate blue today, and cold. “One,” he said. “Unfortunately for you, I can rule my brother out. And so can most of the MPs in Parliament. He attended the opening of the session last night, and was involved in cabinet meetings for several hours after.”

Sally grimaced. “Ooooh. Government big-wig, hmmm?”

John gave a sharp bark of laughter, and spoke for the first time that day. “A minor position in the British Government. That’s all,” he said, eyes glittering.  He stalked up, stiff-legged as an angry mastiff—and Lestrade, without thinking, did an automatic count till full moon. Week and a half—too early to have to worry about rage-change taking John against his own will. “Mycroft Holmes is an arsehole and a dickhead. But he’s not a likely choice for your killings, Donovan.”

He squatted down and examined the body, now that Sherlock was done with it, and sighed, sadly. “Shifter, almost certainly. She’s not one of the angelids, and there are damned few bird weres. Swanmaids and crow girls are mythics—osprey not so much. Could be one of Horus’ Own, I suppose. But—all in all, I’d say shifter. One of Horus’ own would be likely to be able to call the fire, when faced with that much danger.” He looked up at Sally, and said, softly. “Set your forensics people loose on her. Then send her to the medical examiners over at St. Bart’s. Right now they’re where your next round of information is coming from.”

She nodded, sharply, and stalked away, glowering at Lestrade as she paced past.

“I think I’ve got to deal with that,” he said to Sherlock and John, and followed his DS to the edge of the open space, where she paced and stamped on the clean pavement by the road.

“What’s that about, Donovan.”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing, _sir_ ….since you’re determined to behave like a jerk. And I don’t believe it. I know you don’t like Sherlock, Donovan, but that was outside even your norms. What gives?”

She hesitated, then frowned furiously at Sherlock and John, who were still examining the corpse on the green lawn. “Shifters. They give me the creeps,” Sally said, her voice quivering in a way that underlined her uneasy reaction. “It’s just—freaky. No rules, that I can see. Not like vamps. Not like proper weres. Not like the revenants and ghosts and walkers. You know what you’re up against with all that lot, and the rules are on your side. Sunlight, silver, holy water, phases of the moon, exorcism, a stake through the heart and garlic in the mouth. But not with shifters.” She shuddered. “Give me a proper were any day.”

Lestrade gave her a sour look. “Sally,” he hissed, “Sherlock’s not ten feet away. Could you at least keep it down? If you don’t offend him, you’ll offend John.”

“John’s got nothing to be offended at,” Sally snapped. “Good clean were. I won’t let him bite me, but if he did it wouldn’t end the world. And he’s got manners. It’s the Freak that creeps me out—and I don’t care if he knows it,” she added, raising her voice quite intentionally. “Who knows what he is when he’s not in his own skin? And who knows where he gets his other skins, for that matter?”

“I’m a shifter, not a skin walker or a selkie or one of the swan maidens,” Sherlock called back in that deep velvet rumble. “Do your research. I don’t need a skin to change form. I just _change_.”

“Yeah? Into what?” Sally growled back.

“For someone who insists she’s freaked by shifters, you’re damned determined to bait one,” Lestrade said, frustrated. “Look, Sal, he’s not breaking any laws, being shifter…and according to him it helps with the deductions, even when he’s not morphed. Like weres can usually smell and hear better than we do. Give it a rest.”

“So we let him on our sites because he’s a shifter?”

Years after the disaster of the Reichenbach Fall, where whatever else he’d demonstrated, Sherlock Holmes had proven he wasn’t a flight-capable shifter, yet Sally was still wrestling furiously with the detective’s privileged status on Met crime sites. Lestrade wasn’t sure what it was: legitimate professional dismay at the rules bent to the breaking point, affront at the insult to good professional police forced not only to put up with Sherlock’s malice but with the humiliation of being publically bested over and over again, or, as today seemed to indicate, a visceral response to shape-dancers, as they were sometimes called. Whatever it was, Lestrade got tired of dealing with it over and over.

“No, Sal. We let him on our sites because he’s good—good enough to up our close rate by a full ten percent, and that’s in spite of only working the ones he’s interested in. You know what? You’re on this team because you’re good. Levinson? For all Sherlock cuts him down as much as he did Anderson, Levinson’s good. Me, I’m good. We’re on the team because we’re good, and we up our overall close rate. Same for Sherlock. And John,” Lestrade added, conscientiously, though in truth Lestrade mainly thought of John as being the rough equivalent of a goat in a thoroughbred’s stall: a companion animal that kept high-strung bloodstock from climbing vertical walls out of pure tension. He kept Sherlock from crawling out of his skin—or into another skin entirely….

“He’s not even _trained_. He’s an amateur, sir. We’ve _been_ through this.”

Which wasn’t true—but the truth wasn’t something Lestrade was at liberty to divulge.

 “He does the work,” Lestrade pointed out. “As long as he does the work, Sal, let it go.”

“And if he becomes the work?” Sally asked, darkly, eyes shooting sideways to study the tall, dark man in the billowing coat. “What then?”

“When you think you’ve got a case, bring it to me. Until then—Sal, we’ve got enough crimes we know are crimes coming in, without you screwing up a good team trying to go on a wild goose chase for crimes you only imagine.”

“They’re not like weres. They don’t have rules—not our kind of rules. Not rules on our side. Remember that, guv.” She met his annoyed glare with one of her own, all prophecy and doom and ill-tempered spite. “Remember.” She stalked away. Sally was gorgeous coming or going—and deadly in either direction, too. Any shifter that took Sally on was, in Lestrade’s opinion, making one hell of a mistake.

He sighed, and glanced over at his Consulting Detective (& Blogger). Sherlock was smirking. John was glowering. In neither case was this anything new. He shrugged at the two of them. “Sally,” he said as he approached, as though her name alone explained anything and everything. “You know how it is.”

Sherlock sniffed. “At least she’s not sleeping with your current forensics-fail. One might hope to get quality work out of her now that she’s not emotionally compromised by a predisposition to back a moron on the grounds that he’s a decent shag.”

“I dunno,” John murmured, mischievously. “Sounds like sense to me. If you can tell a man by the length of his thumbs, why not tell his deductive abilities by the…”

Sherlock growled, a sound that started fully human but which edged unnervingly into animal ferocity. Lestrade winced, and wondered if he was going to have his first on-site morph.

“Hardly the same thing, John.” The blue eyes narrowed, and he seemed to hiss.

 “I don’t know,” Lestrade chimed in, with a grin. “Give me a smart lover over a stupid one any day. One with good deductive abilities? Yeah. I’ll go for that. Someone who can figure out what I like without being given a GPS locator and an instruction manual? Priceless.”

“He’s got you there, Sherlock,” John said, barely keeping a grin dialed down to low. “Not that you’d know, but…”

“I assure you, if I were active in that respect I’d be _excellent_ —and it would still not reflect on my deductive abilities.”

John and Lestrade grinned at him. It wasn’t every day Sherlock overplayed his hand and asserted knowledge clearly outside his areas of expertise. When he did, as now, both men cherished their innocent merriment at Sherlock’s expense.

“Yeah, ok. Right, Casanova,” John said, fondly. “So, given your…monumental deductive abilities…what next? We’ve covered what we can of the site.”

“Network,” Sherlock said. “Anything that big should have been seen by someone, even if not someone with a proper address and place of residence.”

“Out together?” John asked.

“Not until you can shift,” Sherlock said. “I’m going shape-dancing, and until the week of the moon, you can’t follow where the dance is going to take me.”

Lestrade frowned. “Sherlock…”

“Don’t fuss at me,” Sherlock growled. “I can manage.” He jutted his chin, challenging Lestrade to try to enforce his will. “You’re as bad as Mycroft. You’re not his proxy, Lestrade.”

Lestrade narrowed his own eyes, then. “Your brother can nag perfectly well on his own. When I nag it’s for my own reasons.”

“And either way, it’s unwelcome. Come, John. I’ve plans to make before tonight.”

Lestrade sighed, and watched as the tall, dark shifter and the shorter were sloped away across the park. Damn Sherlock Holmes anyway, he thought. Now, on top of work, he was going to have to reserve time tonight to tail Mycroft Holmes’ insanely reckless baby brother.

oOo

Sherlock Holmes knew his way around the Shadows—the not-very-human realm of places, people, and powers that constituted the Mercurial community of London. Like most of the Shattenfreunde, he had his bolt holes, his hides, his duck-and-covers. For the dance he wanted to dance tonight, the leaning tomb in Hampstead Cemetery was the best bet. Even then, he went in his camouflage clothing—hooded jumper, jogging trousers, trainers. Once there he folded the clothes and stored them neatly under the crypt, in the hollow stonework niche behind the acanthus molding.

Naked, he flexed in the faint light, eyes already beginning the shift. His pupils elongated, and he studied himself as his night vision improved. He could see the scars from his gun wound and the following surgery, a love-present from John’s Mary—or a cautionary warning to remember he was not the only dangerous beast in the Shadows. He ran his hands over the scars, long fingers exploring the harrowed flesh. As he stroked, the shift came over him, and he danced his cat form. Moments later a black leopard with opal-blue eyes ran silent through the cemetery.

He didn’t hear the hush of wings overhead.


	2. Tiger, Tiger.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock goes a-hunting, and finds more than he counted on.

London at night-time!

Sherlock loved it, and always had.  He loved how his leopard form, [smoke black with obsidian rosettes](http://www.wildlifesurvival.com/_S7I0453.jpg), slipped near-invisible through the shadows. Mycroft had laughed, once, a dry, weighty chuff, and quoted Kipling: _I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me._   At the time he had said it of both of them—the two brothers, different yet equal in their solitude, and equal in their regal insistence on going where they would go and doing what they would do, without check or hindrance.

Now, as often as not, Sherlock walked in company, with Watson at his side, whether they went in man-form or as leopard and wolf. But, still…

Still, Sherlock was the cat who walked by himself, and all London was his territory. Whether he sliced openly through the human districts, blatant under the street lamps, his gait a rushing, dramatic swagger that owned the pavement, or whether he raced and leaped from roof to roof, or prowled down dark alleys, he owned his space.

It was a short jog from Hampstead Cemetery to Hampstead Heath. He cut past prim little brick townhouses, straight down the center of the road, setting au pairs shrieking, dragging their charges behind them. He cut up Fortune Green Road, nipped across the intersection with the A41, then headed through the tidy residential areas toward Hampstead Heath, arriving in time to chase a fat fox terrier yipping back to its owner before sauntering lazily toward the murder site.

The tapes were still up, marking off the investigation. Two officers stood on duty, preserving the site from meddlers. DS Donovan’s scent hung on the heavy air, too, compounded of clean human, tart perfume, and cheap soap and deodorant. Sherlock’s heavy head turned as he searched for the source, finding her at last, standing in the shadows of a group of sycamores. He grinned a feline grin, whiskers arching forward, eyes narrowing. He ambled, slow and heavy, letting shoulders swing and hips sashay, as he paced under the tapes and out into the bright area under temporary lighting.

“Stop,” one of the guards called out. “This is a restricted area!”

Sherlock raised his head and looked—a long, slow, stare, blue-eyed. When the guard was properly intimidated, he looked away again, pacing the space, snuffing and huffing, studying the site.

He found the first point at which the victim had entered the area, coming across the green in human form. She’d been walking—in no hurry, under no pressure. She’d cut across open sward, unaware she was hunted.

He raised his head, tasting the breeze, searching for her predator. There—

If he’d been in his human form, he’d have frowned. Instead his ears lowered, and his tail twitched. He loped across the green.

Yes. The trail started in mid-sward—nothing leading toward, nothing leading away. It started as though the hunter had materialized, appearing out of a vacuum.  It—he—had already been in full motion, hind feet digging deep as he leaped for his prey.

Sherlock’s head turned back, and he followed the bounding gallop across the grass, each leap prodigious, each leaving deep gouges as back feet gripped and pushed, launching what had to be a good eight hundred pounds or more of feline….no. Tiger?

Tiger. He thought tiger.

He knew of only one tiger of that size and scale, though, and he knew where Mycroft had been.

He was sure he knew.

He didn’t know the scent of this hunter, he assured himself. A strange animal, from outside Sherlock’s chosen territory.

He followed its race to the point at which it crossed the path of the victim. She’d already detected the hunter’s approach; she was running, fast, shrinking as she went, ripping clothes from her body, each footstep less deep as she dropped in mass, aiming for bird-form and the ability to fly.

Sherlock reviewed what he’d learned that day. She’d been wearing a simple kimono-dress, a common choice of many shifters—kimono-dress, flats easily kicked out of in a single move, underwear that could be removed easily with the flick of a catch. Shifters felt safer knowing they could change quickly, unencumbered by potential cocoons of clothing. She’d ripped loose the tie, flipped the catch on her underwear, kicked off her shoes, all within three steps, and was fighting her way into her osprey form, ready to take flight in spite of night-time. The city was so well-lit that even day-time birds often carried on throughout the night, but even in darkest midnight in the wild she’d have changed and taken flight with that monster behind her.

And here was where it had caught her. The sward was ripped and torn, where the tiger had dropped her, then stood again with her neck between its teeth and shaken her until joints came unhinged, until her head flopped grotesquely against her sternum. Then the beast had rolled, and tossed her, mashed its great face against her, hugged her tight, kicked and kicked with its great back paws, ripping her belly open and spilling her entrails over the green grass…

And here was the point at which the local gang of Mercurial dogs had come racing on the scene, belling and baying, chasing the predator away. Hell hounds, mostly. A few shifters; a black dog with an atypical taste for companionship. Sherlock could scent three of the red-eared hounds of the fae, one of the Gabriel Hounds….they’d given chase, only to lose the beast suddenly. One of the few shifters, able to take human form and give witness, claimed it had simply disappeared—gone, without warning or explanation.

As he reviewed, he heard Sally approaching—scented her on the wind, heard her angry breathing. He turned and met her eyes, the sheer intensity of his gaze bringing her to an uneasy stop nearly three yards from him.

She braced herself.

“Who are you?”

He stared, waiting for her to finally deduce the obvious.

She breathed, slow and heavy. He could almost hear her blood racing, her heart pounding. He absolutely could hear the bellows-gasp of her lungs. He could see her stance change when she finally worked it out. She swore.

“You goddamn tosser. You _bastard_. Holmes. It fucking has to be.”

He cocked his head, narrowed his eyes, puffed his whiskers in self-satisfied smugness. She swore again.

“What are you doing here?”

He raised his head higher and stared far more pointedly.

She sighed. “Yeah, fine, right. Investigating. Like we can’t do it ourselves. Where’s your no-rank boyfriend? Or has the local were pack finally decided to let him in on probation as an omega?”

He growled. She smirked. “It’s not like he’s integrated, is it? But, then, you like it that way. Classic abuser, you. Cut us all off from our support, tie us all to you. You can’t do that with the Met, Sherlock. And I won’t _let_ you do that to the Gov. Think you’re so smart—but you’re just like all the other mind-fuckers out there in the end. Play us all…get your jollies.” She looked around the site. “Not any different from this one, in your way, are you?”

He growled again, deeper, and prowled toward her. She set herself, meeting his stare, her own eyes dark. “Not afraid of you, skin-slip.” Her hand was deep in her pocket, gripping something. Her voice, her stance, her smell gave the lie to her tough words. She was terrified.

 _And what do we say about terrified people, Sherlock?_ Mycroft’s voice spoke from the High Seat in the Court of Sherlock’s Mind Palace.

 _They can’t be predicted and can’t reliably be defended against,_ Sherlock grumbled back.

_So we what?_

_We avoid them._ Sherlock sighed, resigning himself to leaving. Unable to resist, though, he gave a single leap, rose on his hind legs clutching Sally to him, forelegs pinning her arms to her sides—and licked her, once, his prickly, sandpaper tongue dermabrading the top layer of skin from her face. Then he was gone, racing across the greensward, darting into the woods, disappearing into shadow.

oOo

Sally Donovan wanted to cry. She’d nearly pissed herself when Sherlock Fucking Holmes, all black and deadly and satin-smooth, pounced. Then that lick. Bastard. Fucking bastard. She hadn’t even had time to pull out her secret weapon.

She slipped it from her pocket and looked at it, holding it on the palm of her hand.

Stone. A simple green jade _bi_ stone. According to her old college roommate, it could serve as a stay-stone, not just representing the stable, unchanging cycles of earth and heaven, but forcing shifters out of change, forcing them to their true, stable selves.

She didn’t know, though. She’d never tried.

“That was stupid, Sal.”

She spun, finding the Gov standing behind her—naked as a jay bird. She stepped back, gasping. He sighed.

“Come on, Sally. You’re not that thick, are you?”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re…”

He shrugged, and grinned, ruefully. “Shaper. Yeah. Look, gonna change back before the poor bastards standing guard feel morally obliged to trot me in for public indecency, eh? Come talk to me tomorrow. Can’t have you making an arse of yourself like this again.”

‘You’re a shifter,” she said again, blankly.

He rolled his eyes, and grinned….a grin she loved, and had always loved. A grin that was father-brother-best-friend, a guy you’d trust to buy you a pint at a pub without thinking that covered the cost of a shag later. A good man. “Yeah. Ok. You got that much."

"Tomorrow, Sally. My office. Bring a decent cuppa when you come? Talk’s gonna take awhile.”

And then, with a fluid leap, he was gone, and a small, moon-pale owl beat away over her head,  silent in the night sky.

oOo

Sherlock was annoyed, but not beyond bearing. He’d been able to review the kill site in his cat form. He’d had his fun with Sally. He was free in the town, and Mrs. Hudson wasn’t expecting him back any time soon.

He rumbled his contentment. It was no time before he’d slipped into the depths of the Kenwood. He reared up against an oak and rolled his claws into the bark, biting deep before he dropped his weight and heaved, raking deep furrows down the tree trunk. He reached and tore, and tore, luxuriating in the play of his muscles, the ripping away of dead claw layers, the satisfied knowledge that he was scenting his territory. He [moaned](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi3350uEvE8) and [sawed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKcL4EwtBKI), proclaiming his possession of the wood, the park, the city itself.

Then he heard it. Deep—deeper than his own voice. It was a moan and a groan and a bellow…

Sherlock swarmed up the oak almost without thought, claws anchoring him as he scrambled up one, two, three tiers of branches into the tree. Only then did he look down.

It was huge. Easily the eight hundred pounds he’d predicted, with white eye and mouth patches in a broad, dark pseudo-melanistic face. The black stripes were wide—so wide they forced out the vivid gold pelt—and they seemed to bleed, leaving the crown, the nape, the shoulders, the spine all sooty and dark. The paws and lower legs were likewise dark, as though the tiger wore stockings, like a fox. The beast looked up into the branches, finding Sherlock easily. He rolled back his lips, wrinkled his nose, and snarled.

Sherlock didn’t think the tiger could follow him. Mycroft was too heavy to easily climb, seldom managing it without a long run up to the tree for momentum—and even then it only worked if the run-up let him reach the first tiers, after which he could ladder his way up the branches for only so long as they could bear his weight. This tiger was more massive even than Mycroft, and there was no clear run-up to the tree.

It paced restlessly around the oak, growling and grumbling, muttering in deep, angry chuffs and huffs. Every so often it reared back and gripped the trunk tight, struggling to haul itself up, but its weight was too much for claws to easily anchor or muscles to bear. It dropped back down again.

Sherlock lay lazily on a long branch of the tree, one forepaw tucked under his chest, all three other legs dangling loosely. He peered down through the shadows at the shadow-striped monster below.

He couldn’t climb down. He’d fought Mycroft often enough to understand on a visceral level that he was out massed and outclassed: the beast below could disassemble him almost without effort. It had to outweigh him by at least six hundred to six-hundred and fifty pounds—he was little larger as a leopard than he was as a man.

He could, he supposed, leap from this tree to the next, like a squirrel traveling through the forest, but at some point he’d run out of trees…and what then? If he was able to reach the edge of the Kenwood, he supposed he might be noticed, or force the beast to give up pursuit rather than risk being seen. But it was a terrible risk. He couldn’t stay up a tree forever, and he didn’t trust the human mind in the tiger body not to work out a solution to the problem of what to do with a treed Sherlock.

He sighed, and glanced around, looking for a plausible tree to leap to. There was a sycamore flanking the oak, with lower branches overlapping. That might do, though to reach the maple he’d have to risk coming back down a tier or two, possibly bringing himself into reach of a high leap if the enemy tiger really tried.

He looked down and studied his opponent…and then huffed in uncertain surprise.

Smaller…smaller? Darker. Changing.

Sherlock swore mentally and began to panic as the shifter changed, altered its form…

It was going to come up after him. Whatever it was becoming, it would be lighter, better at trees, faster than Sherlock’s leopard, more dangerous. Sherlock caterwauled, sending his anger and fear out into the wood, the park, the city beyond. He rose and hitched backward, preparing to hold the high ground.

Something small and pale hurtled past, cutting the dark shadows of the thicket. Something screamed…a high, almost human shriek. Then something else—the killer—screamed, a darker, lower note. It batted a dark paw upward, toward its face, where the pale blur no longer clawed at its eyes. Instead the ghostly bird was up, and turning, spinning on the tip of a pinion, gaining height and dropping again, shrieking once more.

Sherlock hesitated for only a second, then realized he was being given one chance—one—to escape. He flowed, dark and dappled and beautiful, down a tier, down another, along a branch, and then leaped, making it to the maple bough. Another leap, and another, and then he was out of branches, but he was ahead of his enemy, who still roared frantically back by the oak tree, apparently still battling a ghost owl and losing. Sherlock opened up, then racing fast as he could along the midnight paths, heading for light, for visibility, for hope.

Run-run-run-run-run. Never ask what will happen when you hit the green. Never ask what will happen when that beast stops fighting phantom barn owls and follows after. It will revert to tiger again and use its size and speed and weight and muscle to rip you to pieces—as Mycroft could have a million times over, but never would, to Sherlock’s mixed gratitude and fury.

He was out of the wood, then, flowing like liquid jet over the alien expanse of lit greensward. He could hear the tiger, now, fast in pursuit, determined to kill again—kill the interloper who had trespassed on the site of his kill, trespassed in his woodland.

He could feel the animal gaining on him. Brilliant though he was, he couldn’t see an escape.

A white streak passed above him, shrieking, screaming, chrring a battle cry…silent-winged but wailing like a fury.

Then he heard the voices. Sally Donovan, shouting. Two officers, shouting back. He looked ahead and saw them group, and thought first how useless it was—and then remembered that policemen guarding the kill-site of a serial killer might be armed with more than batons. Might be able to protect him….

A shot was fired, and another. The tiger behind him screamed, a long, angry sound that ripped the night to shreds. Then it turned, and was gone.

Not just running away...gone.

Sherlock catapulted past the three policemen, all braced to fire. He raced out of the park, down the dark streets, on and on until he came at last to his bolt hole, where he flowed into the leaning tomb like ink down a drain. Only when he was hidden, only when he was safe, did he stop and change. He lay, then, panting, heart pounding, shivering.

He’d fought Mycroft, before…and far too often he’d told himself that if he really tried, if he really exerted himself, if he played his best game, fought his best fight, he might win against Brother Tiger. He’d tried to tell himself his survival wasn’t a matter of Mycroft pulling his punches, sparing Brother Leopard the full range of his power.

Even so, he’d occasionally woken from dreams of an angry Mycroft turning on him, snarling, those big white fangs showing in shadow.

Now he knew his fear hadn’t been entirely foolish. He could never have stood against the tiger tonight. Never. Escape had been the one answer—and even that had been won only thanks to the unknown shaper owl who’d dive-bombed the beast, drawing his attention and taunting his pride.

Only then, panting on the cold stone floor of the tomb, did Sherlock wonder who’d saved his life.

oOo

Sally came in early, with a box of doughnuts, a big thermal carafe of tea she’d brewed at home from her own best loose tea, with a bunch of gaudy red and gold and amber chrysanthemums in a turquoise-blue vase. She hoped to get to the office before her Gov. She didn’t succeed.

She tapped at his office door. “C’n I come in, Gov?”

He looked up from the paperwork he was reviewing. “Course. Told you to come in, didn’t I?”

She grinned ruefully. “Half thought I’d imagined it.”

“No such luck.”

She crept in warily, placed the flowers on the desk, the box of doughnuts beside it, and then set the big carafe down. “Harp and Lyre Assam,” she said, shyly. “I save it for best.”

He nodded, dark eyes considering—but friendly. She frowned, slightly, trying to see the owl in his kind, familiar face. She couldn’t—unless it was the dark, dark eyes in the fair oval, or the pale hair soft as pale feathers. “I didn’t know,” she said, apologetically. “What I said about shifters. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

He shrugged, and gave a crooked grin. “Doesn’t matter. Scared is scared, and shifters can be scary.” He poured himself tea, then found a spare mug and poured her some, too. He fished a glazed doughnut from the box, took a bite, and sighed in contentment. “Just remember, most things can be scary,” he added. He drank some tea, then put down the mug, brushing his fingers over the paperwork. “I was reviewing the report you turned in from last night. Quite a show.”

“It should have dropped,” she said, suddenly angry. “Bakti and Sullivan both got clean shots. At least one hit. But there was no blood. No sign. It should have mattered, but it didn’t.”

“It mattered enough that it decided to run, rather than fight. Tiger that big could have killed you all on the way past, if it chose, and kept right on to take Sherlock down. I’d have been the only one with a chance to get away.” He looked at her, eyes unhappy. “For the record, DI Donovan? I’d have hated that.”

She gave a hiccup-y giggle. “Me, too. I mean, not the you escaping bit. The rest of us dying. That would have sucked.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Why didn’t it even leave blood?”

“Some very good shifters….a very few…they can heal themselves. A kind of changing. I’m told it takes enormous skill and energy. I suspect if you and Bakti and Sullivan had kept on shooting, it couldn’t have kept up. But as it was…”

“How did it escape?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t see. I was flying ahead, trying to find more manpower to give you backup. Are you sure it just disappeared? That it didn’t change shape somehow?”

“Into what?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’d heard rumors shifters could have more than one shape—but I thought it was gossip, more than anything. Or little stuff. Like Sherlock could maybe go from black leopard to golden, you know? Cosmetic stuff.”

Lestrade leaned back in his office desk and studied her, cradling the mug of tea in both hands. After some thought, he said. “What do you know about shifters?”

“That they scare the…tandoori out of me?”

He snorted. “Yeah, ok. Look, there are rules, but they’re not easy to explain. Yeah, most shifters in theory could have multiple shapes. In truth, damned few do. Most of us, we have one…and the more powerful we are, the stronger our will, the bigger the form we can take. Sherlock—he’s not really that much bigger as a leopard than he is as a human, yeah? He’s got a lot of will-power, but in the end that spoiled, bratty, entitled baby is part of who he is. He’s big compared to a lot of shifters—it takes a lot of will to shift at all, and most people end up in the size range of a brock or a dog or a cat or a fox. Some as small as a tiggywinkle. Some as big as a roe deer or a big goat. Not many of us are able to manifest as big. Not many of us have multiple forms. Those who do, are often really only good at one, with the other as a sort of holiday party trick to impress other shifters when you’re out trying to pull girls, yeah?”

His grin was mischievous, and she giggled. “So ‘I’ve got two’ is sort of like ‘Mine is bigger’ if you’re a shifter?”

“Hey, wouldn’t you be impressed at two?”

She lost it, laughing helplessly. “You’re awful.”

“Yeah—and you’re beginning to deal with this realistically. And you’re laughing.”

“Yeah, I am.” She poured herself more tea, grabbed a jelly doughnut, bit it, and then asked, considering. “So. Bigger is better, just like usual, yeah?”

“More or less?”

“If you can do big, can you do smaller, too? Like—like if you can do a St. Bernard can you scale down and do a terrier?”

He cocked his head. “Can. Again, damned few have the skill or discipline. Look, it’s a bit like any other talent. You can find dozens of people who can squeal out ‘Three Blind Mice’ on a fiddle. Fewer who can play classical. Fewer still who can play classical and really brilliant Irish folk. And even fewer who can play fiddle, piano, clarinet—and viola. Rule of thumb? Most shifters shift small and have only one form.”

“Like your owl.”

“My owl is a pretty standard shift, yeah. It’s got a bit of class—not everyone can do birds. Flight takes—work. A lot of work. A lot of skill. But it’s still within most shifters’ normal range.”

“How do you stop a shifter?”

He shrugged. “Usually? The same way you’d stop a normal animal of the type. Hell, I’ve seen a mother deal with a child-shifter with a bat form with a fishing net. Caught the kid in mid-flight and grounded her. Literally. That was one sorry little bat.”

“And something like last night?”

He shrugged again. “Until I know more, I don’t know. I still don’t know if it’s even a normal shifter, or something else. It could be a Chimeral. It could be an elemental. It could be a Send. Been a while since any of the lesser powers have shipped a send down to this plane, but they’re always colorful to deal with.”

Sally sighed, finished her jelly doughnuts, and fished in her pocket, pulling out her jade pi disc. She cradled it in her palm. “A friend back in uni gave me this. She knew I was afraid of shifters. She said it could force a shifter out of his shift form and into human form.”

He sat up, then, openly curious. “May I see it?”

She nodded, and stood to hand it over to him, falling back into her chair when he had it. “No idea if she’s right.”

He rolled it on his palm, face intent. “It’s got something.”

“You wan to try to shift and see if it works?”

“Now? And get nailed for sexual harassment?”

She blushed, and sniggered. “Sorry. Forgot you had to, er…”

“How you can forget after last night I can’t imagine,” he said, voice wry. “Gave you an eye full.”

“Maybe you weren’t that memorable?” she snipped, teasing.

He camped a forlorn look. “For some reason all the pretty ladies say that. But in any case, no. Not shifting here, not shifting now. Maybe—maybe an experiment some other time?”

She nodded, and took the disk back, slipping it back into her pocket. “Some other time, yeah. With proper chaperones, mind you,” she added, laughing. “Want to keep our happy working relationship simple, yeah?”

He smiled. “Always.”

She stood, and nodded, then. “Ok. I think I understand a bit better. Thanks for the talk, Gov.”

“You can look up more online, you know. Shifters.com covers the basics pretty well. Surprised you haven’t checked there already.”

“Afraid,” she said, simply. “You know. Didn’t want to look.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Well—maybe you’re not so afraid, now?”

“Afraid different,” she said. “After last night, I want to know what’s going to eat me for dinner.”

He nodded, and she said quick goodbyes, and started out of the room. Only at the last second, before closing the door, did she turn back, and say, “And Gov? It was a nice eye full. Ok?”

She heard him choke, but by then the door was closed, and she was headed down the hall, giggling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sally's bi stone looks a bit like this, only dark jade green, not brown. http://www.bidisk.info/BI.28.JPG
> 
> Barn owls come in a range of colors, from brownish tan to near-white. Lestrade's is near white. Lestrade's barn owl looks like this:
> 
> https://www.google.com/search?q=British+barn+owl&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=6SCdU6LwCcTNsQTB8oDYCg&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=667#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=qt3DMgWd-iGXUM%253A%3BIkXJUXM9Ygn7IM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.birddigiscoper.com%252Fblogbarnowl.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fbirddigiscoper.blogspot.com%252F2005%252F08%252Fsuccessful-season-for-uk-barn-owls.html%3B400%3B297


	3. Tiger Trap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which Our Heroes Formulate a Plan.

“Sherlock? Is that you?”

“Who else?” Sherlock growled, balancing the big ham on one hand, gripping the block of cheese under his arm, and clinging tightly to a bottle of chutney and a jar of mayonnaise in the other large hand. He hipped the refrigerator door shut. “Where’s John?”

“Out like a light. Full-moon’s coming and his body has him sleeping extra. Hungry, huh?”

Sherlock piled the food on Mary’s kitchen table, and gave her a look intended to suggest she was suffering from mental slow-down. “Where is the bread?”

“Breadbox, Sherlock.”

He sighed. “Always something….” He located the breadbox and dealt four slices of bread, slathering them with chutney and mayo. Then he began slicing ham and cheese.

“Spent time in shift?”

“And got chased by a gigantic tiger.”

“Tiger?”

“Shifter. I think.” He frowned. “Biggest I’ve ever seen. No—I take it back. I saw a Kodiak shifter once who was bigger.” He frowned, and licked the mayo-chutney off the knife-edge, pondering and completely oblivious to Mary making a small, amused face at his manners—or lack thereof. “Very nice man. Taught violin to third and fourth form children. Didn’t kill even one.”

“Including you?”

“Came close,” he conceded. “He was fairly angry the time I played “To A Wild Rose” backward during the recital.” He thought about it. “Kodiak bears are quite tall,” he added, informatively. “And loud.” He sliced the sandwiches in half, and offered her a piece. “Hungry?”

“No, thanks. Put the makings away, Sherlock. I’m not cleaning up after you.”

“When do you think John’s going to wake up?”

“Food. Away.”

“I need to talk to him. There’s got to be some way to deal with this.” He started toward the sitting room, three half-sandwiches clutched in one hand, the other on its way up even as he spoke.

A knife planted itself, as if by magic, in the frame of the door. “Food. Away. Now. In the immortal words of Mrs. Hudson, ‘Not your housekeeper.’”

“But she puts the food away for me?” he said, turning limpid eyes on her.

“She’s not a trained operative,” she responded. “I find it…gives me an edge. As it were.”

“You wouldn’t kill me…”

“So far statistics agree with you. One for one. Interested in another round?”

He grinned at her, looking at the small figure in the pink bathrobe printed with purple iris. She had a second small throwing knife in one hand, held easily by the tip. She grinned back, but didn’t put the knife away.

“You’d only go for a surgical strike,” he said. “Enough to hurt, not enough to stop me from putting the ham away.”

“Could be,” she conceded. “Or I could have been up till two getting baby Em to sleep, only to have you wake me up at three-thirty raiding my fridge.”

He sighed, rolled his eyes, and put the sandiwich halves down, good naturedly putting the food back away. “Are we good?”

“Knives and spatulas in the sin to soak.”

He sighed, and followed instructions. “Now?”

“Yeah. Ok. We’re good,” she grinned, and sheathed the knife up her sleeve. “Gimme one of those sections after all. I’m famished.”

Out in the sitting room Mary coiled into the armchair under the bay window, while Sherlock sprawled on the sofa with his remaining sandwiches on his knee. He inhaled the first half, then, contemplatively, said, “How would you deal with an eight hundred pound Siberian tiger shifter who showed no sign of being stopped by a bullet?”

She cocked her head, and nibbled one edge of her sandwich. “Bullet? I thought you’d been shifted…”

“Was. I was at the murder site on Hampstead Heath. Lestrade assigned police to guard the site, and had the sense to make sure they were armed above the norm. Two shots fired, at close range, and it didn’t stop it. Unless my nose missed something it didn’t even draw blood.”

Mary munched the sandwich, thinking. “Huh. My first guess would be they missed, Sherlock. Barring special ops, there just aren’t that many London cops I’d be sure could hit a moving target with one shot in an emergency. Not with handguns, and not when they’re not really ready for it.”

“Could be. But it screamed. I think at least one shot hit home.”

She gave a soft, breathy whistle, frowning. “Ok.” She considered some more. “You’re sure it’s a shifter?”

“No. But it seemed more like a shifter than a Chimeral or an Elemental or a Send. And it definitely wasn’t a Construct: no question it was a self-willed individual. My theory, until further data presents itself, is a shifter.”

“Then a brilliant one. I’ve heard of shifters who could do some self-heal, but never seen one, or run across a reliable report.”

“Definitely very good. He was changing form when the owl saved me.”

She stopped, brain clearly crashing on multiple levels. “Owl? Saved you?” She squinched her eyes shut tight from the mental dissonance. “How big an owl, Sherlock?”

“Ordinary barn owl,” Sherlock said. “Dive bombed him.” He frowned. “I’m assuming another shifter. It was an intelligent action carried through until I was able to flee the scene. Then it flew ahead of me, making enough noise to alert Lestrade’s guards and Sally Donovan.”

“Know any owl shifters?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Isn’t Lestrade a shifter?”

“Fox.”

“Huh. Well, that suits,” she said with a smirk. “Red or grey?”

“Red.”

“Shame. I imagined him as a grey morph or a white arctic.”

“Nope. Very, very nice red fox, though. I’ve watched women melt just looking at him in fox form.”

Mary chuckled. “Sherlock, he’s always in fox form. Really. I promise.”

“I’ll tell John on you.”

She laughed. “He already knows. Just like I know he’s a bit smitted with your brother’s PA.”

Sherlock grimaced and started on another sandwich half, mumbling through the crumbs, “Anthea… You’d think he’d know better. She’s—“

“Dangerous,” Mary said, grinning. “Hey, this is a pretty good sandwich. I’ll have to remember this.”

“So how would you deal with an eight hundred pound brilliant shifter who can self-heal and has at least one second morph form?”

She cocked her head. “Car bomb his human form. That usually solves that kind of problem nicely.”

Sherlock choked back laughter. “I suspect you’re correct. What if that’s not an option? If you have to deal with him in full morph?”

“Out man him, out gun him, or failing that, pray I can outrun him.”

“Managed the third tonight. Wouldn’t want to bet on doing it again.”

“Then you have to outnumber him, or outgun him. Or better, do both. Or call in that Kodiak.” She paused, then said, cautiously. “Or call in Mycroft. Match tiger with tiger.”

Sherlock shook his head, sullenly. “No. This thing was bigger than even Mycroft. Not by much—but it was huge. And Mycroft’s not a double-shifter, much less a heal-all.”

She studied him, and said, quietly, “Are you sure?”

Sherlock frowned at her. “What?”

“Are you sure, Sherlock? Because me, I’d bet that even you have never seen all Mycroft can do. I’d bet no one knows his limits except him…and he may surprise even himself on occasion. But I’m willing to swear your brother’s got abilities he doesn’t announce even to Little Brother.”

Sherlock looked like he’d bitten down hard on a lemon—unpeeled lemon, at that. Something both bitter and sour. He grimaced. “I would think I’d have seen it at some point. We did work together once.”

“And kept no secrets from each other?”

He didn’t answer, instead saying, “Outnumbered or outgunned.”

“Or both.”

“That takes planning. And a known location.”

“What does?” John asked, muzzily, from the stairway. He was dressed in his old, familiar robe, unchanged since Baker Street days.

“Killing giant shifter tigers,” Mary said. “You joining us?”

“After I make tea,” John mumbled, scratching his hair. “Is this about the killer, Sherlock?”

“Yep,” Sherlock said, “I’ll catch you up while you put the kettle on.” He unfolded himself and followed John out, with Mary tagging along, and while John set up tea Sherlock made another set of sandwiches for them all.

When he’d finished his summation, John yawned, and said, “Big. Big tiger.”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds like it heals like a were.”

Sherlock frowned. “If it reallyheals, then…somewhat? Though I doubt it could extend itself as far as a were could. So long as I didn’t use silver I could practically shoot you to a pulp and you’d come back given time.”

“Rather you didn’t,” John growled, pouring water into their mugs.

Mary snerked, and snagged another half-sandwich. “Aw, you’re no fun.”

“You just want someone for live target practice,” John said, sending her a wicked little grin. “Told you—not unless I get to search you first, make sure you don’t have any live silver rounds.”

“He’s got a point, Mary,” Sherlock said. “Tragic accident, grieving widow inherits.”

“Hard to pass silver rounds off as an accident, given what they cost,” Mary said, managing to pout for a half a second before she chuckled. She gnawed one end of the sandwich, eyes going vague as she thought. “You know—if we can lure it out, weres aren’t a bad idea.”

“What?”

“To outnumber it. You wouldn’t want to set normal or shifters against it.  I can’t think of many things you’d want to put up against something like you’re describing. But weres—a pack? It could rip their throats out all night long, snap their necks as often as it likes, and they’d be back and biting in minutes. That plus a few normal with automatic weapons… You wouldn’t even have to worry about line of fire, because even if you hit a were, it would be back up same as if the tiger nailed it.”

“Full-moon five-day’s almost here, too,” John said, considering it. “Local pack’s not got much planned, especially now that Parliament has ruled rabbit-chases a blood sport. I might be able to talk them into giving you a hand. All good community service. Lestrade could probably arrange to get them deputized under the circumstances.”

“And it would be good for you, too,” Mary said. “Improve your reputation with the locals. Get them past their whole ‘lone wolf’ thing.”

“I could enjoy that. Tired of trying to negotiate my own howl every month in the face of their territory issues.”

“So,” Mary said, brightly. “We’ve got a party planned—how do we get Mr. Bad Tiger to attend.”

“We d…” Sherlock stopped cold, and froze, eyes going distant.

“Sherlock?” John leaned against the counter and cradled his tea mug.

“I think he’s fried a fuse,” Mary said.

“Short circuit, maybe?” John agreed, with a crooked grin. He whistled, and waved one hand in front of his friend’s face. “Yoo-hoo, Sherlock. Earth calling Sherlock.”

Sherlock scowled, and sighed. “Damn.”

“What?” Mary said, frowning.

“I think I’ve got to call Mycroft in after all.”

oOo

“When do you think he’ll get here?” Lestrade asked.

“Soon,” Sherlock answered, hands shoved deep in his pockets. John hovered nearby, warm in his anorak.

“And you’ve worked things out with the local pack?” Lestrade asked the doctor.

“Yeah. We lucked out. There’s a solid core of combat veterans in the pack,” John confirmed. “They’ve picked a fight-group of fifteen, and put them under one of the Met’s own weres. Even asked me to join them, but I’d rather stand by Sherlock in case something goes wrong.”

“Mendez is working out stategy and tactics with the special ops team and coordinating with the weres,” Donovan said. “Tonight’s the start of five-day, with two more nights till full-moon proper. With luck we should have things sorted before it goes critical.”

“That’s so long as we’re guessing right about luring him out,” Sherlock said, edgily. “It may not work.”

“We’ve got the teams in place,” Lestrade said. “Even if it comes tonight, we’re ready. Better if it holds off till tomorrow or the next day, but the weres can shift now, if they have to.”

“Yeah,” John agreed, and grinned. “I went through three razor blades this morning. This close to high-moon it’s all I can do to manage stubble, much less clean-shaven.”

Mary, standing nearby, gave a happy, sexy little growl, then chuckled when her dour husband blushed.

“When is he getting here,” Lestrade said, yet again, twitching.

“Now,” Sherlock said, as the big black limo pulled up to the kerb.

The car came to a stop, and the door swung open. Mycroft Holmes’ PA tumbled out, almost as if there wasn’t room enough in the passenger compartment for her. Then a paw reached out, followed by a head that seemed to fill the doorway, and the team standing in the park realized that there probably wasn’t enough room—not for her and for Mycroft Holmes both.

[Mycroft](http://rbth.com/assets/images/2011-04/big/Tiger.jpg) poured out of the car like molten iron, a blaze of orange and black, huge. Sherlock had known his brother his whole life—and had been dealing with his shift-form for much of that time. Even so, seeing him in direct context with simple human-scaled objects like automobiles forced him to reevaluate his brother’s size and power.

“He’s already shifted?” Donovan said, gulping.

‘Mycroft—I promise you, Mycroft will not willingly strip naked in public for your amusement,” Sherlock said. “He was willing to come scent mark the killer’s territory for us, and loiter around as bait—though he did make some rather snide comments about being asked to piss all over Crown property. Hiding behind his umbrella to strip, though, was not on.”

The massive Siberian paced regally across the green grass, preceded by his PA, who had shown the good sense to come in flats rather than heels. She approached the group and glanced over them all, eyes settling on Lestrade.

“Detective Inspector?” she asked.

Amusement flashed for a fraction of a second, then Lestrade said, soberly, “That’s me, ma’am. And you’re?”

She smiled, and said, brightly, “You can call me Diana, today. Mr. Holmes says if we’re hunting during high-moon five-day it’s appropriate.”

“Diana, then,” Lestrade said, pleasantly. “And this is Mr. Holmes, then?”

The tiger, just reaching the group, gave a rumbling grumble that sounded almost like wry commentary. Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“Yes. That’s Mycroft—oversized in all dimensions, including his ego.”

The tiger huffed and grumbled further. Lestrade chuckled, and said, “Good to meet you, Mr. Holmes. Allow me to introduce the team. You know your brother, John Watson, and his wife, Mary already, of course. This is DS Sally Donovan, my second and my partner on the investigation team. Over across the way are Sergeants Rowland and Cassidy, and volunteer unit leader George Klaussen of the Knightsbridge werewolf pack. Rowland will be heading a special ops team, Cassidy will be coordinating with the pack volunteers and Rowland’s people, and Klaussen will be civilian group leader.” He glanced at the PA. “Do you know if your superior had any questions? If he _has_ any questions?”

“All he needs to know is where to pee,” Sherlock snarked, “and where to lie down while we wait for Bad Tiger to show up.”

Donovan, big eyed, nonetheless opted to step forward, then, and point to a wedge of green bounded by the course of three concrete paths, and backed by a long run of hedge. “There,” she said. “It’s down wind, at least tonight, and we think we can hide the pack and the special ops people until Bad Tiger shows.” She met Mycroft’s blue eyes, pale and uncanny in his sunburst, chrysanthemum-orange face, and added, “Sir. There, sir. Sorry, sir.”

The great cat blinked, then looked away, pinning Sherlock in that sky-blue gaze. Sherlock smirked.

“Ready to go walkies, blud?”

John, Mary, and Lestrade all managed to choke back sniggers. Mycroft growled—a long, deep growl with resonance. Donovan squeaked, but stood her ground, one hand fisted tight in her jacket pocket. Diana-the-PA maintained a poker face…but her eyes flashed.

Sherlock spun, letting the skirts of his coat sweep out dramatically. He set a fast pace for the Kenwood, achieving an impressive flounce as he did so. The tiger strolled, keeping up effortlessly.

“I’m impressed,” Donovan said, softly. “He’s upstaging Sherlock— _and_ Sherlock’s coat.”

“It’s an eight-hundred-pound Siberian tiger thing,” Lestrade said, smiling, as he set off after the two brothers. “They’re funny that way….”

Soon they were ducking through the Kenwood.

“Is it far in?” Mary asked.

“Have to see where Sherlock takes us,” Lestrade said.

Sally glanced at him, curiously, but didn’t comment on his failure to say he’d been right behind Sherlock, in owl form that night. She frowned, and realized that she hadn’t heard him say anything about it to Sherlock, either.

“Here we are,” said John.

They’d reached a thicket dominated by a large oak with wide-spread horizontal branches. Beneath it prowled the tiger. He was not, to all appearances, a happy tiger. His head was lowered, as he snuffed and huffed and took in the scent of his enemy—first on the ground, then, more carefully, along the gouged, torn bark of the tree trunk. He gathered himself, and gave a roar that raised the hairs on Sally’s head, and pulled up goose bumps even on Lestrade’s arms. Then he gave a dark hiss, poised for a moment, and launched himself, hurtling as high as possible, grabbing with his claws, and ripping down, leaving bright rust-brown crevasses behind where his claws tore their way down the bark.

The next half-hour was filled with angry tiger. Angry tiger ripping stripes into tree trunks. Angry tiger scent marking quite a lot of the thicket and the surrounding woods. Angry tiger kicking up duff from the forest floor, grumbling under his breath. Angry tiger standing with head up, tail twitching, face in a mask of fury, groaning out his annoyance to all the world and then some. Donovan huddled close to the Gov. The Gov, she noted, seemed to hunker into himself a bit—not intimidated, exactly, but definitely aware he was in a small thicket with a very big predator in a very bad mood. Mary, John, and Sherlock, however, seemed unimpressed. Indeed, if anything, John seemed cynically annoyed at the display, and Sherlock cynically amused, leaning casually against the first oak tree, arms crossed over his chest and legs crossed at the ankle.

When the tiger at last came to a settled stop, unmoving but for a faint tail quiver, Sherlock drawled, “Ready for nap-time?”

The tiger glowered, and paced away, headed for the open and the little wedge of green in front of the hedge.

Sherlock loped behind, catching up with his brother. “Next time be sure to drink a pot of tea before you come,” he said, in false helpfulness. “I don’t think you peed enough…”

That was when the angry tiger knocked his baby brother into a gorse bush.

Baby brother swore. Intensely.

That was also when Donovan realized for the first time in her life that tigers can grin.

Listening to Sherlock moan, she grinned, too. It was good to know smart-arse Sherlock had a big brother.

“What you laughing about?” Lestrade asked, with a smile that suggested he already knew.

“Nothing, sir. Just appreciating the fact that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, sir.”

Lestrade barked a short laugh, and said, “That it does, Sal. That it does…”

oOo

The Bad Tiger didn’t come that night.

It didn’t come the night after, in spite of Mycroft ripping half the Kenwood up in his annoyance, and then lying for all the world like a model posing for a glossy advert, black and orange and white against the glowing green.

When they all called it a night and returned to their respective vehicles to go home, Sally slipped into the passenger seat of the unmarked squad car with Lestrade.

“What do we do if he doesn’t come,” she asked.

“Same as we’ve been doing. Keep poking at the evidence, keep testing ideas.” He sighed. “Hope…hope there’s a break.”

“You’re trying not to say ‘hope there’s another victim to give us new information,’ weren’t you?”

He sighed and didn’t answer. She sat, her hand plunged in her pocket, turning the jade _bi_ disc around and around.

“You didn’t tell Sherlock you were the owl, did you?”

“No.”

“Does he know you’re a shifter?”

“Yes.”

“So why…..?”

He shrugged, eyes not leaving the traffic swirling around them. “Keep my cards close to my vest, yeah? Don’t hide being a shifter, but don’t talk about it much, either. People forget to factor it in. Sometimes that’s useful.”

“I can see how that would be,” she said, voice dry. “Surprised the hell out of me, that’s for sure.”  She glanced over at him, studying his face, thinking how ordinary he could seem, how safe and kind. “Smarter than you let on, you. Bet you’ve got other reasons for keeping your mouth shut, too.”

“Bet you’re right,” he grinned.

“And you’re not going to tell me.”

“Nope.”

She sighed. “Yeah. Ok.” She turned the disc again and again. “What’s it like?”

“Shifting?”

“Yeah.”

“Depends. First time it hurt. You have to sort of learn how to manage it. Now it usually feels like a weird dream. Lucid dream. Strange and a bit spooky, but nice, too.”

“Not gross? Or like losing yourself?”

“No.”

“And…being an owl?”

He was silent for a few moments, then said, softly, “Being a bird is beautiful. I can’t tell you, Sal. There aren’t words. It’s just…beautiful. If they ever diagnose me with cancer, or something like that—I’m going to wait as long as I dare, then, when I’m still strong enough, I’m going to shift to a bird, and fly out to sea, as far and as long as I can. If I’m lucky I’ll die between one wing beat and the next. If I’m not—water’s good, too. I like water. And it will be faster than the disease.”

She shivered at the longing in his voice. “You’re not…you’re not sick, though. Are you?”

“No,” he said, voice smiling again. “No. I’m fine, Sally.”

“Good,” she said. “Good, Gov.” She shifted in the seat. “Stay that way.”

The next night, though, Bad Tiger finally came—and the Gov came as close to dying as Sally ever wanted to see again.


	4. Crouching Tiger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And, the conclusion. I do pray that the stages of combat make sufficient sense and are exciting enough, and that the various twists make sense and all that jazz.
> 
> Have fun. Comments are welcome: this one was challenging.
> 
> NOTE: There are a few loose ends I forgot to nail down, it being late and the main arc of the plot taking over. Revision shall occur later, but it's just grace notes and a couple minor explanations. The big stuff all got put in place. (Tammany)

“God, he’s big,” John said, as he sat hunkered behind the hedge with Sherlock and Mary. They weren’t grouped with the main forces, but behind another hedge, at an angle to the ambush site, giving them a line of attack from the side. “I mean, he’s…” he struggled for words, then shook his head, helpless. “He’s big. Bloody, bloody _big._ Are you sure your shaper is bigger still?”

“Pretty sure.”

“He was chasing you,” John said. “Objects in the rear view mirror may appear bigger than they are.”

“I think you’ve got that wrong.”

“For cars and mirrors, maybe. For enemy forces gaining on you?” John snorted. “No. I promise, I got it right. Absolutely right.”

“He’s right,” Mary said. She was sprawled on her stomach, minding a sniper rifle she had prepared and waiting for use. Smaller, and not a shifter, she’d been selected for sniper detail, unlike John and Sherlock, who would be ready to take the battle to the enemy if they had to. “’Gaining on me’ always adds at least half-again to anything chasing me. I’ve learned to factor it in.”

“I assure you, I both see and observe,” Sherlock snarled. “It was bigger than Mycroft.”

The married couple both peered out the gaps in the hedge, blond heads, pale blue eyes making them look like matched white cats—alert, predatory, and very aware of the giant tiger only yards away.

“He’s still bloody huge,” John said, again. “Just…huge.”

Sherlock sighed and grumbled, then said, “Yes. Fine. My big brother is big. Do you think you could take your mind off the first big tiger and instead look out for the second?”

“I bet he used to keep you in line when you were cubs,” Mary said, eyes still on Mycroft, considering. “Bet that wasn’t the first gorse bush he tipped you into.”

“Beneath his dignity,” Sherlock snapped.

“Bet you drove him to it.”

“Hardly.”

“Bet you were the kind of brat to insult the neighborhood boys, then run and tell big brother when they smacked you.” He looked at her with sour irritation, and opened his mouth, but she cut him off. “Know when you’re fibbing, remember? Did you shift into a little fluffy leopard cub and pounce on his tail?”

“John, could you please manage your wife?” Sherlock drawled, aiming for indirect insult, having failed at direct deception.

John glanced at him, and said, mildly, “Operative, assassin, and the mother of my child. What do you think? And she’s got a point. I keep imagining you leaping at him off the top stair of your parents’ house in cub form, and Teen Tiger Mycroft frantically morphing and catching you every time, rather than let you break every bone and crack your skull open.”

Sherlock grumbled something.

“What was that?” Mary said, grinning.

“I said, it’s not like he had anything better to do,” Sherlock said. “I mean, how many hours translating Cicero should anyone spend, when they can play Bagheera and Shere Khan in the back garden?”

John sniggered, ducking his head. Mary, though, continued to study the ambush site.

“Your DI’s walking the rounds, though at a distance. He’s dressed to shift, too. Why? Fox-changer is going to be entirely out of his class in this situation.”

“Small but nimble,” Sherlock said. “I saw him change the outcome of a were dominance fight in a pub, once, by shifting and scooting in to bite the attacker in the balls.”

John barked with laughter…a rather literal bark, as he was barely holding his wolf back, with the full moon rising over the park.

“Why don’t you change into something comfortable, love,” Mary said, with honest concern. “It can’t be much fun trying to hold the wolf in at this point.”

“You two don’t mind?” When they shook their heads, John heaved a sigh of relief, slipped quickly out of his wooly jumper and his jeans, handing them to Mary to fold, and seemed almost to spill into his wolf form.

“Handsome beast,” Mary said, lovingly, ruffling his sandy fur.

He lay down, sprawled over Sherlock’s long feet, chin on Mary’s thigh.

“You?” she said to Sherlock, stroking her husband’s head.

“I suppose,” he conceded, then slipped out of his coat, tugged off a pullover, and slithered out of the drawstring linen trousers he’d worn. He hunched, thighs and the curve of his body maintaining modesty as he folded his clothes away for later, then he seemed to stretch, gesture, sigh—and the leopard stood on the grass. He leaned down and licked John’s face, one paw pinning him firmly.

Mary chuckled. “Two handsome beasts. Lucky, lucky me.”

The leopard chuffed, the wolf grinned and panted, and Mary settled over her rifle, alert and ready for action.

oOo

“Why haven’t you shifted, Gov?” Donovan asked, from her own hide behind a freestanding topiary yew trimmed in the form of a peacock with spread tail feathers. “I’d think bird’s-eye view would be good, yeah?”

He tapped the side of his nose and smiled at her. “Cards close to the vest, yeah? Remember, I don’t particularly want people thinking of me as a shifter. Gives away an advantage.”

“Yeah, but…” She shrugged and pointed up. “Gains the advantage of everyone thinking you’re just a bird, doesn’t it? I mean, no one pays attention to birds, really, do they, you know?”

“And no one pays attention to middle-aged coppers lurking around doing just what people expect of them.”

‘Yeah, but…”

Lestrade sighed. “Look, I’m in quick-change so I can flip out of human and into shift-form fast if I need to. Meanwhile I have the advantage of being recognizably me. I can talk, my people recognize me. It works, Sally. Ok?”

“Ok, Gov.” She stared out at the ambush grounds. “He’s so big. So---“

“He’s a gorgeous hunk of tiger,” Lestrade said, a smile in his voice. “And doesn’t he just know it?”

She sniggered. “Got that right.”

Mycroft Holmes owned his little wedge of grass. He owned the walks leading to it. He sprawled, at ease, dominating the entire park—everything in view. Anything that could see him, had to know he was the Apex Predator to end all Apex Predators. The long, striped tail lazily beat the ground, up-down, in a slow drum roll. His head was high, his forelegs supported the massive chest and shoulders.

“See the three stripes on his forehead?” Lestrade asked, arms crossed as he grinned at the sight of the regal beast.

“Yeah?”

“Supposed to look like the Chinese character ‘wang.’ Means ‘king.’ Look at him—ruler of all he surveys.” He smiled to himself. “The British Government at his leisure.”

Sally laughed. “Yeah, I can see it. How important is he? Really?”

Lestrade shrugged. “You tell me. According to him he’s just got a minor position in the British government.”

“Yeah, right. Limo and PA and all.”

They laughed, sofly.

“Takin’ a turn around the walk ways, Sal,” Lestrade said, then. “Want to walk my beat.”

She nodded. “I’ll stay here. Gives me a good sight of the approach from the Kenwood.”

“Yeah.” Lestrade frowned. “Me, I want to get a view of the other directions.”

“You think he’s coming in from the street?”

“I think he’s a clever damned bugger and a shifter. And that I don’t know what he’s thinking.” He stretched, checked the hang of the loose overcoat, the tear-away tabs on his T-shirt and trousers, making sure he could free himself of his clothes fast if he had to. Then he strode out, demonstrating the easy patrol pace of a man who’d done his time on foot, back in the day.

Sally watched him go, then returned her attention to the big tiger and the approach from the Kenwood.

Mycroft Holmes was like a vivid carnelian blazing in the middle of all the green, under the artificial lights. He was a brag—every inch of him shouting to Bad Tiger “I’m a rival, you sonofabitch. Come on out and I’ll school your sorry arse.” She glanced uneasily toward the dark Kenwood, all shadows and hidden groves and thickets—a great place for a shifter to hide. She kept imagining the huge, dark animal, waiting in the shadows, biding his time, planning his attack. He’d come barreling out of the woods so fast, chasing Sherlock.

She’d never seen the leopard shifter so openly terrified before, as though the beast called up some deep archetypal terror in his soul. She glanced at Mycroft, and shivered. Yeah, Ok. Maybe growing up with King Tiger as your big brother would give you a bit of a complex, even if King Tiger wasn’t all bad. He could knock ordinary people arse over teakettle so easily. Having Mycroft’s evil twin coming up from behind with intent to kill probably did justify Sherlock’s terrified gallop across the parkland and away.

She shivered. Bad Tiger was terrifying. She glanced toward the Kenwood, wishing he’d arrive, praying he wouldn’t. Once had been enough. And, yet—God, she wanted him dealt with. Dead or in prison, but no longer out treating London— _her_ London—as his killing field.

Why was he doing it, anyway? What did the big bastard get out of leaving mangled shifters, innocent citizens one and all, dropped carelessly around London’s parkland? There was something rude about it: they weren’t predator’s prey in the ordinary sense. Even those partially eaten had been left gnawed and largely entire, like the catch of a well-fed domestic cat killing for sport, not for dinner. Or like markers. “This is my hunting ground. These are my kills. You can’t stop me.” It was a finger flown at the people who resided there, the police and officials who held them all under their protection.

She’d lost sight of the Gov. Now all she could see of the entire project was Mycroft, dominating the space, ruling his territory, returning insult for insult to draw the killer out. Bait laid out in response to the killer’s own bait.

She shivered, then, and wondered: who’s trapping who?

She was just reaching for her mobile phone to contact Lestrade to ask, when the screams began. They rose, wet and sudden and brutally brief, from behind the hedge backing Mycroft. Then….they stopped.

oOo

Sherlock was running before his mind could even formulate words, crashing through the low spaces at the base of the hedge toward the larger hedge behind his brother. The silence was more terrifying than the sound had been.

John ran alongside, keeping pace, his canine form fit and fleet, head low as he galloped toward the enemy.

Mycroft had risen, turned, snapped into battle posture so fast it would have challenged most cameras to track. He balanced on steel-spring haunches, one forepaw lightly touching ground to maintain his balance, the other already raised, open toes arched out, forcing the claws out ready for combat. His face was a mask of fury, nostrils flaring.

Sherlock watched him balance, prepare—and then almost fall backward as his enemy leaped from the other side of the hedge, up and over landing mere feet from Big Brother.

Yes, Sherlock thought, as he scrambled to a halt, trying to assess the situation. Yes, the beast was even larger than Mycroft. Its sooty pelt, with the wide, black stripes reducing the orange fur to mere streaks, its hooded head and shoulders, its black-gloved paws—it was Mycroft’s evil twin, and then some.

The tableau lasted for mere heartbeats, and then the two beasts engaged, screaming.

Where were the werewolves? Where were the special ops gunmen, hidden waiting?

Sherlock had a sick feeling he knew.

He could see Sally Donovan on the far side of the field, rushing toward the hedge, much as he was, a gun held ready, looking for a clear shot. It was more courage than he’d somehow credited her with. She was clearly terrified, but heading toward the battle, not away. John had paused at Sherlock’s side, but Sherlock didn’t believe it would last all that long: he was ready to launch himself again, chest low, hind legs gathered, baying furiously at the rage of tiger in the center of their arena.

Over head a bird shrieked, and pale wings shot above the affray, headed over the hedge. The bird, passing over, screamed again, and rose, up and up. It held, then, wings beating, not light enough to ride the wind like a windhover, but able to tread air.

There was no sign of Lestrade or his little red fox shift form. Sherlock shivered, suddenly afraid his friend had been behind the hedge when the screaming began…and ended.

He debated whether he should join Mycroft, offer assistance, or not. No—first he had to know what had happened to the were forces and the special ops personnel. He was afraid he knew, but he couldn’t keep on without some sense of what happened. Mycroft was fighting well, reminding Sherlock once more that his brother’s “minor position in government” involved far more than most people ever realized. Mycroft was a warrior, even if he was often a warrior disguised in pinstripe gabardine.

Mary, he knew, would hold her point and maintain her position. She’d chosen well, finding a place that served as well in the current situation as it had in the original analysis. She’d hold her fire, though, unless she could gain a clear shot at Bad Tiger. Mycroft was not, by anyone’s standards, casual cannon fodder. If spent, he’d have to be spent for a sure thing, and a more important one than a mere serial killer.

Sherlock launched himself then, headed for a low opening halfway down the hedge, where the foliage came short of the root level, leaving a small arch opening on the other side. John paced him, not needing orders or instructions.

The tigers were so involved in their battle there was no sign they noticed the leopard and wolf darting past, or diving through the gap. They’d taken over yards of space, far more than that contained in the little wedge Mycroft had lain upon, and the leapt, knocked each other arsey-varsy, joined together, teeth dug deep into the loose skin of nape, or grinding down on a paw too slow to pull away.

There was a cry from above, as Sherlock and John rose up on the far side of the hedge.

It was an abattoir. Sherlock could see the beast had come from behind, sudden and unexpected, and slain the small special ops team before they even knew they’d been approached. It looked like a single long sweep of one massive paw had downed them at a stroke, and mere seconds later they’d all been dead, necks broken, skulls pierced by massive canines. Fast work, leaving the tiger free for the real fight. The weres, fast as they were, had clearly just been turning when the tiger launched himself among them, taking them as he found them. Some where half-shifted, some had clearly been fully changed already, taking advantage of the effects of high-moon: the moon at its full, riding high in the sky above. The tiger had been ready, though, and had a plan. Not silver, no—but as permanent and as sure. Each skull was crushed or bitten through, slim wolf heads shorn in half as though by great parrot-beaked shears, the arsenal of the giant tiger sufficient to destroy their brains completely enough to make recovery slow, if it ever happened at all. Sherlock would bet on it never happening. Bad Tiger had done his work well.

Sally Donovan stood at the other end of the hedge, gun drooping low as she stared out over the carnage. She lifted her head and met Sherlock’s eyes, horror in every move, every breath.

He groaned, a low, ululating sound, blended of fury and fear. John growled.

Sally licked her lips, then shouted over the raging snarls beyond the hedge, “It’s Mycroft. I think Mycroft was the target all along—the killings were to lure him out. Make him put himself on the line.”

Sherlock roared, then, furious.

Duped. They’d been duped.

He snarled at Donovan, not sure if he was angry with her, or just with her news. Then he spun, and cuffed one of the special ops automatic assault rifles toward her. He growled.

She stared at the rifle come to rest at her feet. “Oh.”

He yowled, head low, eyes narrow.

She nodded, then. “Yeah. Ok. I get it. I’ll try.” She tucked her handgun in her shoulder holster, and picked up the automatic, going to hunch near one of the gaps in the hedge. “I’ll try. I promise. I’ll try.” She turned her head. “The Gov. He’ll give you a distraction if he can. See if you can draw Bad Tiger away from Mycroft.”

He didn’t bother responding, just flowing back through the gap under the yew greens, John behind.

Mycroft and the beast were a whirlpool of motion in the center of the heath. Round and round they flowed, never stable, never still. It was no wonder Mary hadn’t yet attempted a shot: a clear view of Bad Tiger could give way in a blink to a scope full of Mycroft.

Sherlock hunched, looking for an opening—for any point he could enter the battle and shift the tide, rather than being in the way or just getting killed. It was so fast, and so fierce—like nothing he’d ever been trained for, other than, in Mycroft’s occasional phrasing, “Kindly getting the hell out of the way, brother dear.” His voice ticked out of him, a rough, uncertain sound.

Beside him John snarled, then turned and barked, stalking toward Sherlock. For a moment he was stunned, feeling his friend had turned on him. Then he understood—John could risk entering the fight. He was were at high-moon: if he avoided brain-damage, he’d heal…and while it wasn’t reassuring to have seen what Bad Tiger had done to the were pack, John knew, now, and was prepared—and Bad Tiger was otherwise occupied.

Sherlock forced his leopard to nod. John could take the battle to the enemy, giving Sherlock a chance to look for a better gamble for his leopard.

John dropped down, then, and shot forward with the deadly speed and agility of a wolf savaging dangerous prey. He slashed with his eye-teeth, finding Bad Tiger’s flank as Bad Tiger dealt with a frontal attack by Mycroft. Bad Tiger screamed, but kept his focus, and seconds later he succeeded in dropping Mycroft with a huge twisting blow, that caught the other tiger at the shoulder and flipped him, tumbling over the grass. Bad Tiger swarmed, then, throwing himself on Mycroft, hind feet churning in an attempt to eviscerate the fire-bright tiger before he could recover. Mycroft rolled, though, grappling his attacker, his own hind legs kicking and tearing.

Sherlock paced the perimeter of the fight, watching John dart in, slash, and dart away, silent now. The were was scientific in his precision and his care, not presuming to attack Bad Tiger head-on, or risk coming between the two primary combatants. His advantage was in is ability to distract, and to wear-down the enemy. Already Sherlock could see long tooth-slashes added to the wounds Bad Tiger already showed.

But he could also see Bad Tiger was healing himself—not quickly and efficiently, like a were, but intelligently. Even as he watched, Mycroft raised his head and managed a slicing slash at Bad Tiger’s jugular. For a short second blood jetted in a pulsing, thin fountain—a fountain that ebbed, dropped to a trickle, and was gone, leaving only dark blood on dark fur, almost invisible.

Above, Sherlock heard a shrill cry. He glanced up just in time to see the owl from the previous encounter dropping like a lead plumb bob, claws open rather than fisted tight for a punching blow. The bird raked at Bad Tiger’s eyes, forcing him back from Mycroft, then dodged up again before the dark tiger could react.

Mycroft was up, freed by the distraction. He tackled the other tiger head turning as he plowed his shoulders into the dark cat’s chest. He caught Bad Tiger by the jaw and twisted his head, shaking—shaking hard.

Yes! Sherlock thought, as Bad Tiger screamed and the jaw turned, disjointed, dangling painfully loose from the rest of the skull. Yes!

Above the little owl screamed again, and coasted in a wide circle, almost a victory lap. John darted again, ripping a long line across Bad Tiger’s haunch. Mycroft drew back and gathered himself again for one last attack, preparing for the kill.

Then Bad Tiger danced a new form, fast and subtle and terrifying—something extinct and horrible, bigger still than before—and with the new form, Bad Tiger was now whole. He rose up.

Kodiak, Sherlock thought in horror, then corrected himself. Bear—but something from long, long ago. Something from the age of giants. It towered above, and raged at the little beasts below.

“Run!” someone shouted. A woman, but Sherlock was too stunned to determine if it was Mary or Sally or someone else. “Run!”

He drew back, ready to beat a retreat. Above the owl screamed again, and dropped, ready to distract this new threat, this whole and uninjured threat, giving the others time to retreat. John was already a tawny-dun streak flowing across the greensward. Mycroft was gathering himself.

The bear swept one paw wide, and raked the owl out of the air, claws ripping it out of flight, mangling it, tossing it aside with such ease it was like a man shooing a fly.

Mycroft leaped, and Sherlock moaned.

Damn it, brother-mine, run. Why can’t you run?

Because Mycroft was Mycroft, and was now all that stood between the bear and London—between the bear and little brother and Mary and John and Sally. Because Mycroft was Mycroft. He managed one glare at Sherlock, and then the two were once more in battle, this time with Mycroft out-massed by at least three hundred pounds.

Furious, grieving, Sherlock swerved to retreat beyond the hedge, to do what he could from a fall-back position.

On the grass, halfway out from under the hedge, was Sally, face wet with tears, her jacket wrapped around the little owl. She was dragging it back to her position behind the hedge.

Sherlock growled, leaned down, snagged the jacket in his teeth, and pulled it through with him, hoping idiot Donovan would have the sense to follow behind.

oOo

God, Sally thought. Oh, God. The Gov was down. And damn Sherlock, the little owl was so hurt, so damaged. Just pulling the jacket she’d wrapped him in that way might have been enough to kill him.

She crept back through the gap in the hedge, fighting her sobs. When she got there, the black leopard had already released the bundle containing the Gov’s shift-form. She crawled the remaining feet, and unwrapped him, gently—so gently.

“Gov, come on, you’ve got to hold on,” she growled, fighting tears. “Come on, sunshine. No giving up, right?” She looked and whined, having to fight back the grief and fear and illness rising in her gorge.

The bear’s claws had raked across the delicate little body, tearing open the belly, breaking both wings, crushing ribs. It was a wonder the Gov was alive at all, and it was sad and ugly that he was. His dark eyes stared, wide and in pain, and his beak gaped wide as he panted out his life.

“Dammit, Gov,” she tried to say. “Dammit…” Her voice was choked with tears. She put out a hand, not sure what to do, what to touch. She trailed one finger over the round curve of his skull, all plush feathers and far, far below a little dome of bone. His round eyes blinked. “Oh, Gov, don’t. Don’t go. Please.”

She wanted to say, “I love you,” because it was true—but the kind of truth that needs hours to explain. She didn’t have hours to talk about a stubborn, funny, quixotic paladin detective and a plain clothes officer who’d transferred in as much to work with the madman DI as anything. Of finding a friend and a  brother and a father and a foe and an ideal all wrapped up in the rumpled overcoat of her Gov.  “Oh, dammit, Gov. We can’t lose you.”

Beside her something moved, and she turned to find Sherlock—not his leopard, but Sherlock in his man-form, naked and shocked and wide-eyed, staring at the owl.

“That’s…Lestrade?”

“I thought you knew?”

“No,” he said, voice shaking. “No. He—not in this form. I didn’t know he danced an owl.” He leaned over the dying bird and growled, “Change, Greg. Dammit, change.”

“What?”

“The tiger—it healed when it changed. New body.” He ignored her after that, his big hands wandering, as lost as hers, as he looked for somewhere, anywhere to touch and caress the owl that might not hurt. “Change, damn you.” His head dropped, and she could see tears dripping onto pale feathers. “Too weak,” he muttered, baritone dropping to a grieving bass. “Too weak.”

She clutched her fist tight in her pocket, then, and gambled.

oOo

Sherlock snarled as Sally Donovan reached out and smashed her hand against the owl’s face, cradling it in her palm. “He’s dying.”

“No,” she snared right back, unwavering. “No. Give it a chance.”

“Give what a chance.”

“Never mind. Just—shut up and give _me_ a chance.” She leaned over the owl and crooned, softly, voice tender. “Come on, boss. Come on. We aren’t ready to lose you, sunshine.  Come on, let the _bi_ help you change back.”

The broken wings shuddered. The body spasmed and stilled.

Sherlock whined, deep in his chest, thinking Lestrade gone. Then the shift began.

“Yes,” Sally hissed.

Feather to fog to skin and silver hair. Wing to hand and arm. The form flowed, danced, shifted, fluid and shining and bright as ripples on water and soft as mist on the surface of the Thames on an autumn morning.

“Yes,” Sally hissed again, voice smiling. “That’s it, Gov. Come on home, sweetheart.”

“Uh…God.” Lestrade rolled, heavy and stunned. “Fuck me! Jeeeeeeezus, that hurt!”

Sally laughed; Sherlock joined her. “Yeah,” she said. “Looked like.”

Then, beyond the hedge, a cat screamed. Not a war scream, but a scream of agony.

Lestrade was up and moving before the other two could stop him. “Where are we, then?” he asked over his shoulder, looking for a peek-hole in the hedge. Then, finding one, he swore again. “No fucking time.”

He stepped back, and before Sherlock could say a thing, he leaped up…

And up…

And up…

And high overhead he soared—not an owl, but a gryphon, silver and shining, and large as a roc.

“Jesus,” Sally said, echoing her boss. “Jesus. Fuck me!”

Sherlock was too stunned to even waste breath saying, “Rather not.” He was beyond quips, by then.

He didn’t even bother to change back to his leopard. He just crept under the hedge and watched, jaw dropped and eyes huge.

The bear had pinned Mycroft—it was too big, too fast, too well armed with tooth and claw and muscle. The regal tiger was down, and broken, bleeding, an eye ripped loose and long, bleeding runnels clawed across the beautiful face. A leg had been crushed between massive jaws. He fought to keep his throat covered, but the bear’s muzzle dug along his jawline, looking for a place teeth could find purchase.

Then the gryphon fell, a sweeping plummet, hundreds of pounds accelerating from the heights. The sound of air through firm pinion feathers was a low, pattering hum: angel armies would sound like that as they fell upon their enemies. The bird cried out.

Lestrade’s gryphon, Sherlock thought, was part peregrine, part tiger. Unique, damn him.

He hit the bear and was gone, rising again even as the beast toppled, then turning in a tight gyre, spiraling out, then in again as he gained momentum, preparing to drop again.

Mycroft looked up into the sun, one-eyed, ravaged, brutalized—too hurt, Sherlock thought, to fight on, and too endangered to revert to his human form to attempt the same healing trick that had worked for the bear and Lestrade.

He was not, though, stupid. Nor, Sherlock discovered, was he any more limited than his foe—or his friend.

The tiger crouched—and changed.

“You sonofanbitch,” Sherlock hissed. “You…you…bastard.”

The dragon coiled and turned, red and orange and sunshine gold. A Tudor dragon, half-gryphonish in form, but with scales and a darted tail. It was big.

Bigger than any bear that ever lived.

It launched, and Sherlock knew then in a way he’d never quite internalized before that the mythic beasts flew not by muscle and science, but by pure magic. Mycroft _flew,_ wings spread wide, and white and gold gryphon and blazing flame dragon circled, a spinning yin-yang, spiraling over the sky.

“Holy God in heaven,” Sally Donovan said beside him. He glanced over and took her face, turned up to the sunshine, watching the two spin in the air. “Holy God. Is that the Gov? Is that really the Gov?”

“Yep,” Sherlock murmured, for once in sympathy with Lestrade’s testy second. “Lestrade and Mycroft.”

“Wicked,” she murmured, too stunned for more.

“Yep,” Sherlock said.

And then, finally, conclusively, Mary shot, and the bear fell, and the battle was finished.

Sally looked over at Sherlock, then, and her nose wrinkled, “Oh, Jeez,” she said. “Sherlock Holmes, put your bloody trousers on!”

He never did tell her why he laughed so hard, then, but as he looked up at his friend and his brother turning lazy circles in a bright blue sky, all he could think was Mycroft would be so amused that Sally agreed with him.

He loped across the greensward, then, and retrieved his clothes. Now that the wars were over, it was time to get dressed again.

oOo

“Anthea’s identified him,” Mycroft said. “Former soviet agent. He went freelance at the end of the Soviet Union, but now that Putin’s moving right again, he’s started working more officially.”

“Old enemy?” John asked, as he carved ham in the little kitchen of his and Mary’s home.

“Rather,” Mycroft said. “He was my opposite, back in the day. At the time they expected him to follow much the same path I did. If Gorbachev hadn’t overseen the deconstruction of the KBG and the rise of the new system, he and I would probably have spent the past two decades glaring at each other as we rose though the ranks, a step at a time.”

“So he was supposed to take you down. Even the field up a bit.”

“Yes. Apparenlty they were expecting that in time I’d be brought in to lure him out. Tiger against tiger.”

“Instead he got a one-man crouching tiger, hidden dragon.”

Mary moaned, and threw a pot mit at her husband’s head. She hit him, too, in spite of rocking her baby in her arms. “Mycroft, was that pun grounds for divorce?”

“It may be,” Mycroft said, with a pert grin. “Do you wish it to be? We’ve an opening for you in our ranks, if you do.”

She laughed. “No. I’ll keep him. Father of my child, don’t you know.”

Lestrade smiled. “You don’t divorce a good one for bad jokes.”

Sherlock grumbled quiet disagreement, then turned to his brother.

“ I can’t believe you hid that skill from me.”

Mycroft shrugged. “I like to play my cards close to my vest,” he said, smug and self-satisfied.

Sally Donovan, nursing a bottle of beer, looked sharply from her Gov to Mycroft. “Why do I get the feeling you two know each other?”

“Merely birds of a feather,” Mycroft said, dismissing her comment airily.

“No feathers,” Sherlock pointed out. “Scales. And fur, as a tiger. Lestrade’s the one with feathers.” He gave Lestrade an evil look. “And you!  You…you…”

“Yes?” Lestrade asked, brightly. “I what?”

“You—sneak.”

“No. Just a copper.”

“Among other things,” Sherlock snapped.

Mycroft glowered at him. “Now, now, brother-mine. Careless lips.”

Sherlock snorted. “At least now I know both your secrets.”

Mycroft smiled, and caught Lestrade’s eye. “I suppose you do,” he said, in rather unconvincing dismay. “Ah, well. Nothing left to hide.”

Lestrade grinned back at Sherlock’s brother, and said, softly, “End of an era, ennit?”

And Sherlock, watching them, had the sudden sinking conviction that the revelations had just begun—and might never end.

With two sneaky men like Mycroft and Lestrade, there was no telling what secrets were still held in keeping for another day.


End file.
